Cameron Laird Photography reinvents his business
The creative industry is among those hardest hit by COVID-19, with one Townsville photographer reporting a 90 per cent downturn since February.
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THE creative industry is among those hardest hit by COVID-19, with one Townsville photographer reporting a 90 per cent downturn since February.
Cameron Laird has been operating as a freelancer in North Queensland for 26 years and said he’d never taken such a hard hit before with bookings drying up basically overnight.
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“I do mostly commercial photos and because of restrictions of not bringing in contractors most of them cancelled,” Mr Laird said.
“I’d say I lost between 85 – 90 per cent of business.”
In the latest figures by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 53 per cent of small arts and recreation businesses have closed their doors and many of them aren’t expected to reopen.
Like all small business wanting to survive, the videographer and photographer has had to adapt to the changing environment quickly.
While he often videoed funerals for grieving families, he now live streams them for those who can’t be there in person.
“The thing is when restrictions were first introduced I didn’t know how long they’d be hanging around, whether it was a year or a few months,” he said.
“I’ve always done videoing but not the live streaming so I had to learn pretty much overnight. “You just have to adapt and it’s worked out extremely popular and something I see continuing afterwards.”
Mr Laird said it would be some time before his industry recovered, if at all, but hoped one positive to come out of COVID-19 would be locals supporting small businesses in their own community more.
“I think there is that awareness to shop hyper locally and we’re seeing it already,” he said.
“And when the borders open up it may be an opportunity for larger companies to hire photographers in Townsville instead of bringing them in from Brisbane and down south. “Support the local guys that have just as much skill.”
The I Lost My Gig website, established to track COVID-19-related cancellations, has logged $340 million in lost gigs.
Originally published as Cameron Laird Photography reinvents his business